She/her(?)•18•Temple Gate resident•Arkham Asylum patient•Web Avatar•Vampire from Oklahoma/Rancho Cornvalis/Santa Carla•Crew member of the Aurora•Joey Drew Studios employee•Adequate Wordsmith•BLU merc•Literature Club member•Desert Bluffs hater
I had a nickel for every off-putting, antisocial IT guy working for a shady organisation, who ends up assimilated into a computer system, that I'd latched onto
Amazing film. Alex Bale created a fantastic horror story and the scale of the project is so impressive. As someone who enjoyed the theories first and still comes back to them, this film blew all of that out of the water.
Oh yeah, I also discovered who appears to be the franchise's designated sexyman. As in Jared. Love this guy. I love how he doesn't really have a deisgn bc I've seen so many cool takes on it. Like hell yeah, make the guy a centipede. Put the evil cyborg creature in Spongebob merch.
I need to draw this creepy guy. Go full Absolute Riddler on his ass.
So I've made multiple posts where I point out similarities between OUTLAST and TMA, but I completely forgot to bring up the idea of an OUTLAST and DC crossover.
Like hear me out. Arkham Asylum. Reopened by a corporation led by European researcher Hugo Strange and hell maybe even teaming up with Ra's Al Ghul since that guy can basically live forever. Doing Morphogenic Engine experiments on the patients to try and bring about a "supernatural", all-powerful entity they can control and use as a weapon. The patients, all past super-criminals, claim to see bat-like shapes in the Rorschach videos.
And they manage to find a mind that is sufficiently traumatised, yet lucid enough to manifest this entity successfully. And they find it in the mind of orphaned billionaire Bruce Wayne.
The rage and repressed trauma from his parents' murder fully manifests this "Bat-man" swarm creature that terrorises the criminals and corrupt doctors within Arkham Asylum. Many assume this Bat-man to be supernatural, when in reality, it is all science and technology.
Patients that may include: a man claiming to be a religious prophet who revels in the blood spilled by the Bat-man as his merciful God, an extremely large and menacing ex-prisoner with surprising intelligence who is set on destroying the Bat-man after being a subject of experimentation, and an ex-Arkham Asylum doctor who was disgraced and admitted after grossly breaching company protocol for his unethical research into biology and fear.
(TLDR: Hugo/Ra's as Wernicke, Bruce as Billy, Batman as the Walrider, Deacon Blackfire as Martin, Bane as Chris and Scarecrow as Trager)
"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane
(LONG ASS RANT) I absolutely adore Outlast 2 after I recently played it for the first time. I really want to argue that its better than the first, especially since so many people either hate it or ignore its existence. The story, the music, the protagonist, the antagonists, the way the school story is integrated into it, the themes about religious institutions being corrupt whether legitimate or illegitimate-
But then I don't understand what happened with Chapters 3 and 4 (the raft and the mining building)
For one, watch any playthrough of Outlast 2. Usually, Chapters 1 and 2 take about half of the playtime, in a good way. You have finding Lynn and the chapel and meeting the heretics and Val and Knoth and several encounters with Marta. Constant threat and constant activity.
Then chapters 3 and 4 kind of just...happen. You get on a raft for a bit, get chased by nondescript heretics. Then you get to the mine building. Get chased by nondescript heretics. Done.
I think the main issue is, after we left behind Marta and killed Nick/Laird, there's no main roaming antagonist for those 2 chapters - minus Demon Loutermilch in the school sections - so both sections felt aimless and less threatening.
I guess you could argue the same happens in the first game, post-Trager. But even then, Chris showed up multiple times, plus the Twins, plus the added twist of losing our camera. Maybe this could have been remedied more encounters with Marta, Val or Knoth, as we only see them in Chapters 1, 5 (Val only) and 6 in the entire game, which leaves them incredibly underutilised.
And another thing, the school sections becoming more and more frequent during these chapters. Not necessarily a bad thing; I absolutely enjoyed them. Easily the most scared I've been playing an Outlast game. But when playing, it feels like the priority of the storytelling had shifted from the actual main story, to the school story that was supposed to be adjacent to it. And with these constant, potentially disruptive shifts from the school to the raft/mine building, it made the main settings feel less engaging, as we didnt stay in the setting for long enough to get accustomed to it.
At least with the school flashbacks in Chapter 2, Nick/Laird were a constant enemy, even shooting at us as soon as we came out from one of the visions.
I still absolutely love the game, and the sections aren't necessarily bad. It's just that they feel empty compared to the content of the rest of the game and it seems so easy to fix.
And if I headcanoned Eddie Gluskin as aromantic-asexual? What then?
(@skrimp_draw_picture on tiktok has some fantastic takes on his character, including Eddie being sex-repulsed and afraid of his own genitals which I think is terrific characterisation and you should check them out.)
Like I love the idea of him yearning for the perfect partner and a legacy through a family in theory due to his trauma, but in practice it's not what he truly wants.
I have a conflicted relationship with the Night Hunter from Outlast trials by which I mean I love him in theory - his design and gimmick, his voice, the dynamic people give him with Pusher
But oh my god he is the biggest pain in the ass in actual practice and I want him to fuck off.
Like I've been attempting my 7th rebirth (I think) and I've got it down pretty well, even with the mirror and the stupid futterman bombs. But then all i have left is the generator and that tortoise-looking bastard will be camping outside the generator building and the Screamer is tag-teaming with him and then the lag variator sets in and he stabs me like 5 times and the attempt is dead.
I love him but I hate him. I appreciate him from a safe distance where he can't mess up my rebirth at the last minute.
I've actually thrown myself into that Space-themed PA OC, but it's all still a WIP
He's still sort of missing that OUTLAST brand of tragedy and being messed up - and doesn't have a design yet - but I'll figure it out. Anyway, here's an aesthetic idea plus some backstory ramblings under the cut
Like I said in the original post, I want him to be similar to Easterman for ironic story purposes, so most likely he was a head researcher or head scientist for space research.
Over time he got more drawn into the physics and theortetical science of space (e.g fractals, golden ratio, infinite scale/regress) to the point of near obsession. Like religious psychosis but with science; he sees it as the only viable belief system, even over morals and ethics. (Sort of Vast meets Extinction for TMA fans).
(Story-wise, it would also serve to contrast Liliya's character and themes. Especially since the rest of the staff were less enthusiastic about Liliya and the Advent of Bogomolova, following the charismatic female PA of religion with an apathetic male PA of science/physics would male sense, in order to spite Easterman's judgement.)
As a result he was extremely misanthropic, but less outright hate for humanity and more apathy towards them. He sees them as walking physics to be tested, leading to gross mistreatment and harmful experiments against them, often on a massive scale, in the name of constant scientific progess.
After some time he would be disgraced and fired, and maybe having some sort of grievous injury in his time there (still undecided, maybe something with machinery?). He would later be admitted to Mount Massive due to his physics-based psychosis, and assumed to be schizophrenic (maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Not sure yet.)
Like I said, these are just concepts of a plan at the moment and I'll probably make more ideas for when he is transfered to Sinyala, including his design and his personal brand of disgusting.
I had a dream about TMA that took place during the apocalypse or something and Jon and Martin were the only survivors out of the main cast, and it starts out with them sitting around very devastated because they don't think the world can be saved, and even if it can, they won't get their friends back.
And then it gets revealed that Jon is rocking a baby, who is an avatar so it's fine even though the world ended, and he's like very clearly attached to it and Martin is too, but they debate on whether it makes sense for them keep it and ultimately decide that it doesn't, but they don't want to abandon it either. Helen shows up and cruelly jokes about how the only solution would be for Jon to smite the baby, to which he doesn't even get angry because she's kinda right, but he just keeps on rocking it.
This is like actually a really cool fic idea though but also oh my god the only survivor and their apocalypse baby that we should maybe kill maybe not?
Absolutely agree (especially Two-Face and Scarecrow, Ike Barinholtz has spoiled future Harveys for me)
A hot take maybe but I also would say this about Audio Adventures' Joker.
Many elements of this Joker deviate from mainstream - most noticeably Brent Spiner's vocal performance being quite different from the Hamill-adjavent voices most people do - but I think it really works for the show's universe.
The writers know how to balance all the show's villains so they can be both comedic and actually intimidating when the show needs it and this is done really well with Joker in season 1. He manages to actually be entertaining while also being grounded and threatening, without the gritty "society" angle that IMO has saturated his portrayals in recent years (not necessarily bad, just not my bag).
Also, he's not necessarily the show's Big Bad, which is refreshing. Even in Season 1, with the Dark Purple Dawn plot, it occurs mostly in the background as an looming threat. This means we get more screentime with other rogues while not having gom overshadow their plotlones. And he's basically absent from Season 2 as well, but when he does appear, it's absolutely effective.
I could rant about this show for ages please don't forget about us DC give us season 3
